


Ceremony of Strangers

by FromAnonymousToZ



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: 3 different meetings, Damn these two really do flirt by having philisophical debates, Flirting, M/M, Pre-Canon, Slice of Life, This is for a request on my tumblr once again, Three different times, Unsubtle Flirting, Younger characters, er - Freeform, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27895780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromAnonymousToZ/pseuds/FromAnonymousToZ
Summary: They had both been young once.Perhaps not young, but younger.
Relationships: The Beast/Enoch (Over the Garden Wall)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Ceremony of Strangers

**Author's Note:**

> Interested in the origin of this story? It was requested [here](https://doyouknowhowtowaltz.tumblr.com/) at my tumblr! Feel free to drop by and if you have a question or request go right ahead and drop it in my ask box! I am always delighted to have new story ideas.

They had both been young once. 

Perhaps not young, but younger. 

Back before wars or political alliances, before most of their fellow wardens had even sprung into existence. 

The Beast’s forests had been smaller, small enough that it could be crossed on foot within a week without the aid of magic. Only a handful of carefully tended edeltrees marred it, a few small towns and hamlets tucked within its borders. 

The Beast had been small then. 

Perhaps not small, but smaller. 

His antlers did not span nearly as wide, merely budding from the sides of his head, thick with leaves and flowers and snow. His delicate limbs had been thin as sapling branches, and he had not creaked when he moved. His shadows had been thinner, merely draped instead of laced up around him. 

Hunting had been a long, laborious process, one that required his every attention, his repertoire of songs had been smaller, and he had not yet developed his practice at leading souls astray with only a few notes and a meddlesome hand here and there. 

He had carried his lantern on his budding antlers and did not dare entrust it to any being, mortal or otherwise. 

Enoch had been smaller then. 

Perhaps not small, but smaller. 

His plenty had not been as wide-reaching, his web not so carefully woven. 

Pottsfeild was not even a glimmer in the catskin’s eye. He was simply a creature leaving death in his wake and collecting his due, occasionally causing harvest to come months too soon with his extended presence. 

He had been more inclined to birdskins then. He had no town to lord over, simply destinations, few and far between. He roamed between realities and times and worlds, killing and collecting the dead. 

They were aware of each other in the way of predators. They had no quarrel with one another and avoided each other, circling, growing. 

They knew of each other from stories, stories told by mortal lips in taverns and barns and on deathbeds. They knew each other as verses in songs, as shadowy villains and monsters in bedtime stories, and as characters in ballads. 

They were younger then. 

Still older than most beings that walk or swim or fly, but younger. 

Time had still been fluid then, and they were young, growing into their mantles, finding their roles, making their places in the world. 

They would not meet, not properly, for hundreds of millennia. 

It would be a long time before the Beast, the operatic, edel-twisted, warden of the winter woods, would set foot in the web of a charming Harvest Lord with his quaint little town of the dead. 

Longer still before, an alliance would be woven between them, fragile and thin, dangerous and perhaps a touch spiteful.

It would be longer still before they would come to love one another. 

But they did meet, long before, as strangers. 

They were young and yet to claim both their names and titles, but they were not so blind as to not recognize each other.

“Greetings, Stranger.”

The voice is low and musical. It will one day be a voice that makes mortals quake, a voice that commands all of winter, that puts behemoths to sleep and turns souls to oil. 

But for now, it is merely a voice calling through the trees. 

“Hello, Old Winter.” 

The cat purrs. It will one day be a cat that will have seen the rise and fall of empires, a cat that will have buried and raised the dead, a cat that will have more plenty than any mortal could dream of having. 

But for now, it is simply a cat, walking worn paths. 

A figure peels away from the shadows of the trees and falls in step with the cat, its budding branching antlers holding a metal lantern aloft. 

At last, the cat speaks again. 

“You are a strange creature.” It murmurs. “So hungry.” 

“I could say the same for you, Cat.” 

They walked onward. 

“I have always wondered, Old Winter, why a forest?”

The winter spirit shook its head, blue forget-me-nots fluttering away from his antlers like snow buffeted by the wind. 

“It is simply my nature.”

The cat’s ears twitch. 

“Is it?” He asks. “What is our nature, but what we make it? We are not born, we do not die, what nature is there that we do not choose?” 

The winter spirit pauses as if to think. 

“I have chosen my nature, and I choose a forest.”

“Why did you choose hunger?” 

“Why did you choose plenty?” The winter spirit counters. 

They fall silent. 

It will be years before they fall into a rhythm for their debates, tossing back and forth hypotheticals and counter-arguments. 

One day they will pick up this argument again, and one day it will become their favorite debate to go back and forth over, arguments that will last for days on end, every point and counterpoint perfectly countered back and forth. 

But they do not know that yet. 

They are strangers, walking through the wood, and nothing more. 

Not yet. 

At last, they come to the place where the path splits. 

“This is where I must leave you, Stranger.” The winter spirit murmurs. “I have trees to attend to.” 

The cat’s tail flicks. 

“Very well, I shall see again, Old Winter.” 

“And I, you, Cat.” 

With a nod of heads, they depart from one another.

* * *

They met on an old dirt path at the crossroad between their worlds. 

One walked upon four feet and the other on two, one headed to the northern lands and the other to the southern world. 

They have met before, creatures so old are bound to have encountered one another, but they treat each encounter as if it is their first, with all the ceremony of strangers. 

They come to this place, as if strangers, and regard each other. 

They sit at the side of the crossroads on an old fence. 

“Do you have a name?” The dark one asks. 

The cat’s eyes narrow as he observes the dark one. 

He is older now, wiser too, but more than anything, he is coy.

“They say to never give the fae your name.” 

The dark one tilts his head at that. 

“I did not ask for your name. I merely asked if you had one.” 

“Hm,” The cat’s tail flicked at that. “No.” He finally answered coyly. 

“Nor do I.” The antlered one replies, humor painting his voice. 

“It seems so strange,” the cat murmurs. “That ones such as us ever meet at all.” 

“We are travelers, Old One,” The antlered one’s voice is soft. “You may have your lands, and I mine, but we are both prone to wandering. It is only fitting we meet somewhere.” 

“Hm, if that is so, what would you call this place? This strange world where you and I meet?”

The winter one pauses to think for a moment, humming. 

“November.” 

“That is a time, not a place, my friend.” 

“Oh?” The dark one croons. “I seem to have forgotten the difference between the two; remind me, Old One.”

“Now that you mention it,” The cat murmurs, tail flicking. “I’m not sure I know the difference myself, but there must be some, I’m sure a mortal could tell us.”

The winter spirit makes a show of looking from one side of the crossroad to the other, his antlers swinging in vast, slow arks. 

“I do not,” He murmurs at last, mirth in his voice, “Happen to see one we can flag down.”

The cat, too, made a show of looking up and down the path. 

It remained empty.

“Why,” He drawled. “You’re right, cold one. Alas, I suppose we shall have to wait until one comes along to ask.”

“What a shame,” The dark one teases. 

A comfortable silence spans between them, a silence found only between the oldest of friends and the newest of strangers. 

They sit together for many long hours.

At last, a young woman comes along, her hair short and her aprons long.

She gapes at the sight of them. 

The cat flags her down.

“My companion and I were wondering if you could tell us the difference between a time and a place.” He purrs, and the woman clutches at her apron. 

“Is this a riddle?” She asks, eyes narrow. 

The winter spirit shakes his head. 

“Nothing of the sort,” He murmurs, one hand dancing out to rub along the cat’s ears. “Simply an argument between strangers.”

“I’d hardly call us that, Hope Eater.” 

The winter spirit regards the cat and then turns to address the young woman once more. 

“Very well. Simply an argument between familiar strangers.”

“We were hoping you could help us settle it.”

The woman pauses to think.

“You can move between places, but not between times.” 

The two creatures share a glance.

Eventually, the cat nods, tail dancing in arcs. 

“Very well, thank you.” He dismisses her, and she returns to her journeying. 

“Perhaps we should have asked a creature that was not so inclined to linear time.” The cat murmurs once the girl is out of earshot. 

“Perhaps.” The winter spirit says, claws stroking down the length of the cat’s back. 

“I suppose we shall simply  _ have _ to meet again to settle this.” 

“What a burden.” The winter spirit says in a tone that implies he does not at all think it is a burden. 

The catskin chuckles and leaps down from the fence. 

They bid each other goodbye and set along their own paths. 

They will not be the same creatures when they meet again, but when they do, they will like each other, and there will be a debate to settle.

* * *

The Beast barely sets foot into Pottsfeild when ribbons tangle themselves around his feet and his antlers.

“Well, howdy, stranger.” Enoch purrs. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Greetings, Enoch.” The Beast croons, pressing a smile into the ribbons coiling around his face and braiding their way into his antlers.

There are already three bows tressed up in his antlers when Enoch speaks again. 

“You are so cold.” Enoch clucks. 

“Winter is my domain,” The Beast murmurs, fighting down the blue in his eyes. “It is in my nature.” 

Enoch hums at that, evidently taking it as an opportunity to see how quickly he can make the Beast steam. He was making short work of it, too. The last dredges of summer mingle upon his tongue, churning in sweet autumn, tempered by winter’s chill. 

“Then surely it is in my nature as autumn to do the task of warming up winter.”

“Hm, I believe you are mixed up upon time once more. It is far more suited to spring to do the task of melting winter, Harvest Lord.” 

“Perhaps if you define it linearly.” Enoch clucks. “I think it far more fitting for winter to be heralded and ushered out by autumn.” 

“I think,” The Beast drawls, voice unimpressed. “You are allowing personal bias to get in the way of the natural order of things, Harvest Lord,”

Enoch pouts at that, flicking a ribbon at the Beast petulantly. 

“The natural order is that all things end with death.” He murmurs against the Beast, his voice transcending his mouthpiece to reverberate through the Beast’s wooded form. 

“Hm,” The Beast hums fondly, claws carding through ribbons. “Somehow, I believe you are diverting this debate from its original topic.” 

“Perhaps.” Enoch purrs. 

Enoch’s maypole bends, its head nosing against him in some imitation of a kiss as the edge of Enoch’s humor strikes through the Beast’s souls, sending them thrumming like a string plucked. 

“So hungry,” Enoch teases, a ribbon dancing along the Beast’s shoulders. 

“So plentiful,” The Beast counters, claws tangling in ribbons. 

Enoch laughs, low and fond, voice rising up from the earth and nestling in the eves of the Beast’s body. 

“I have no idea why you would choose such a fate,” Enoch murmurs distractedly as he adds another bow to the plethora in the Beast’s antlers. “It seems so pitiful. Not that you are, of course, dear, you’re absolutely brilliant, but it seems like such an odd choice.” 

The Beast tugs at a ribbon, and Enoch keens. 

“It is simpler,” He hums. “To consume than to give, easier to hunt mortals than trap them.” 

“I meant no offense, Hope Eater.” Enoch croons. “I did not mean to have you defend such a choice, I may not understand, but I am certainly grateful you chose such a thing.” 

“Grateful, hm?” The Beast drawls dryly, and Enoch chuckles, plenty already washing up from the ground and lodging itself in the Beast’s souls. 

“Oh, yes, darling.” Enoch purrs, far more cat-like than the maypole has any right being. “Let me show you just how grateful I am.” 

And the Beast throws back his head and laughs, drowning in plenty, wrapped in rapture.

**Author's Note:**

> Interested in the origin of this story? It was requested [here](https://doyouknowhowtowaltz.tumblr.com/) at my tumblr! Feel free to drop by and if you have a question or request go right ahead and drop it in my ask box! I am always delighted to have new story ideas.


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